Overdrive

Ramping up its export juggernaut and taking full advantage of WTO entry, China’s economy in the first decade of the new millennium was “boom with no bust.” The information revolution fed more growth, as hundreds of millions of Chinese came online. But the Internet also became a forum for discontent, and the new leadership team of Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao acknowledged growing environmental and social justice concerns with their call for a more harmonious society. Then, as the credit crisis in the US spread into a global economic crisis, China’s export-dependent growth appeared in jeopardy, and fears of a Chinese crash surfaced. But, as in 1998, China weathered the storm, and emerged in 2010 as the world’s largest exporter, largest foreign creditor, and fastest growing major economy, poised to soon surpass Japan and eventually eclipse the United States as the biggest economy on the planet.

Generation Gaps

It’s Not Just About Economics

The Early Days of China’s Internet

No Dispensation from The Laws of Economics

US-China Symbiosis Fed the Boom

Cai Guoqiang

Artist

Cai Guo-Qiang was born in 1957 in Quanzhou City, Fujian Province, China, and lives and works in New York. He studied stage design at the Shanghai Drama Institute from 1981 to 1985 and attended the Institute for Contemporary Art National and International Studio Program at P.S. 1 in New York. His work is both scholarly and politically charged. Accomplished in a variety of media, Cai began using gunpowder in his work to foster spontaneity and confront the controlled artistic tradition and social climate in China. While living in Japan from 1986 to 1995 he explored the properties of gunpowder in his drawings, leading to the development of his signature explosion events. These projects, while poetic and ambitious at their core, aim to establish an exchange between viewers and the larger universe. Since September 11th he has reflected upon his use of explosives both as metaphor and material. “Why is it important,” he asks, “to make these violent explosions beautiful? Because the artist, like an alchemist, has the ability to transform certain energies, using poison against poison, using dirt and getting gold.”

Before the Olympics, many of China's problems seemed clearer to me than they are now. How do you understand China? By the problems in its ideology? As a one party system? But, after I had worked on Olympics for 2.5 years, and in thinking about China's culture, its ancient cultural values and heritage and what was passed down to contemporary China as one of the themes in preparation for opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympics and, at the same time, working with many Chinese politicians and other people, I saw the rapid changes playing out in Chinese politics, the hard work and the difficulties experienced by the Chinese officials. A lot of the problems are not as simple as they seem.

On the one hand, we could feel the greatness of universal values. We should push for human rights, democracy, freedom, open society, freedom of speech, the right of political participation, etc. We should continuously try to remind society [of these values], so that society can increasingly have these universal humanistic values. Because these are all are universal, people's dignity and people's basic rights.

But, on the other hand, we also feel, or understand, to a degree, that, in fact, the top leaders of the CCP, they also know that these universal values aren't something that only the Westerners hold, they are universally necessary, including for Chinese people. Chinese people have contributed to these universal values. Like the advent of the ancient merit system, where even the poorest farmers and segments of society, as long as they had talent, could become the country's leader through merit tests. Chinese people, including the government, have realized this. They also realize that this kind of political and societal openness has not been reached. It hasn't reached the societal value of putting people first. This society can be said to have an unhealthy and unsustainable distribution of the benefits derived from economic development in the long term. I feel that this is clear to the government officials.

In their reality, they're firstly a party system, they're controlling the country. Firstly, they have a process, a condition: They want to build slowly, to make China a multi-party society, to have more openness and more freedom for expression. And then allow public opinion to supervise the party, to supervise the government. This process is self-conflicting and difficult one.

On the one hand, what I just said is obviously the more selfish side of things, but on the other hand, when considering the responsibilities of the CCP to the public, the country and history. They will also consider mass disruptions -- they don't want the many kinds of political disruptions, thought struggles, debates and fights, anything that will disrupt rapid economic growth.